Data from: Disease refuge or ecological trap: location-specific performance of amphibian hotspot shelters
Data files
Dec 04, 2025 version files 15.74 KB
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daily_summaries.csv
11.52 KB
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README.md
4.22 KB
Abstract
Artificial hotspot shelters have been developed as a conservation tool to help frogs thermally escape the amphibian chytrid fungus, a pathogen highly sensitive to elevated temperatures. To evaluate how these structures perform under contrasting climatic conditions, we deployed temperature loggers inside hotspot shelters and beneath wooden board analogue retreats at two Australian field sites: a humid subtropical site in Sydney (NSW) and a cool semi-arid site in Werribee (VIC). Hourly temperatures were recorded throughout winter and used to quantify daily microhabitat thermal regimes relevant to chytrid suppression and amphibian physiology. The dataset presented here consists of daily site-level summaries, including mean temperature, daily maxima and minima, and total hours above biologically important thresholds (20 °C, 25 °C, 30 °C), derived by averaging across all structures at each site. Ambient weather variables from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology are not included due to licensing restrictions, but full station metadata are provided in the article’s supplementary materials.
Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.0zpc867b6
Description of the data and file structure
Artificial amphibian hotspot shelters were deployed at two field sites in Australia (Sydney, NSW and Werribee, VIC) to monitor their thermal performance under contrasting climatic conditions. iButton temperature loggers were installed inside each shelter structure and beneath wooden board analogue retreats, recording hourly temperatures throughout the winter monitoring periods. These deployments were used to quantify daily microhabitat thermal regimes relevant to amphibian physiology and temperature-sensitive disease dynamics.
Files and variables
File: daily_summaries.csv
Description: Daily site-level microclimate summaries derived from hourly iButton temperature logger data collected inside artificial hotspot shelters and beneath wooden board analogue retreats at two Australian field sites (Sydney, NSW and Werribee, VIC). Values include daily mean temperatures, daily maxima and minima, and total hours above biologically relevant temperature thresholds. All values represent averages across all structures within each site
Variables
- Site: Field site where microclimate loggers were deployed (“Sydney” or “Werribee”)
- Year: Calendar year of observation
- Month: Month (numeric)
- Day: Day of the month
- Week-no: Week of the year (ISO week number)
- period-day: Sequential day number within the study period for that site
- Date: Calendar date in DD/M/YYYY format
- Elevation-(m): Site elevation (meters above sea level)
- HH-average-temp: Daily mean shelter temperature (°C), average across all shelter loggers at the site
- HH-20-25: Number of hours during the day when shelter temperature was between 20–25 °C
- HH-25-30: Number of hours during the day when shelter temperature was between 25–30 °C
- HH>30: Number of hours during the day when shelter temperature exceeded 30 °C
- HH >25: Number of hours during the day when shelter temperature exceeded 25 °C
- HH>20: Number of hours during the day when shelter temperature exceeded 20 °C
- HH-Av-Max: Average daily maximum shelter temperature (°C), averaged across all shelter loggers
- HH-Av-Min: Average daily minimum shelter temperature (°C), averaged across all shelter loggers
- Wood-av-temp: Daily mean wood-analogue temperature (°C), averaged across loggers beneath wooden boards
- W-20-25: Hours per day when wood-analogue temperature was between 20–25 °C
- W-25-30: Hours per day when wood-analogue temperature was between 25–30 °C
- W>30: Hours per day when wood-analogue temperature exceeded 30 °C
- W >25: Hours per day when wood-analogue temperature exceeded 25 °C
- W>20: Hours per day when wood-analogue temperature exceeded 20 °C
- Wood-Av-Max: Average daily maximum wood-analogue temperature (°C)
- Wood-Av-Min: Average daily minimum wood-analogue temperature (°C)
- Air temp bucket: Categorical descriptor of the ambient air temperature regime for that day (e.g., “10 to 15”, “15 to 20”), used for visualisation
Code/software
The dataset is provided as a standard CSV file and can be opened with any common spreadsheet or data-analysis software (e.g., Excel, Google Sheets, or R). No code or scripts are included with this submission.
Access information
Data was derived from the following sources:
- Ambient weather variables used in the associated analyses were obtained from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) Climate Data Online portal, which is publicly accessible at:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/
These data are provided by BOM for research and informational use but cannot be redistributed due to licensing restrictions under the Australian Government Copyright Act and BOM’s own data access conditions. For this reason, BOM-derived variables are not included in the Dryad dataset.
Station IDs, variables, and date ranges required to re-download these data are provided in the article’s Supplementary Tables S1–S2.
iButton loggers recorded hourly temperatures inside each hotspot shelter and beneath wooden board analogue retreats. For each day and each site, temperatures were summarised to daily means, daily maxima and minima, and total hours above biologically relevant thermal thresholds (20 °C, 25 °C, 30 °C). All structure-level values were then averaged to produce a single daily site-level value for each variable.
These site-level summaries were analysed separately for the Sydney and Werribee trials using generalised least squares (GLS) models with an AR(1) correlation structure to account for temporal autocorrelation among days. Models tested how daily microhabitat temperatures responded to ambient maximum temperature and solar exposure.
Note on derived thermal metrics:
Daily values for hours above thermal thresholds (20 °C, 25 °C, 30 °C) and daily mean/max/min temperatures represent derived summaries calculated from the raw hourly iButton logger records. The underlying raw hourly logger data are not included in this repository but can be provided upon reasonable request.